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"Epstein, Steven, 1952-"
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The Medieval Discovery of Nature
This book examines the relationship between humans and nature that evolved in medieval Europe over the course of a millennium. From the beginning, people lived in nature and discovered things about it. Ancient societies bequeathed to the Middle Ages both the Bible and a pagan conception of natural history. These conflicting legacies shaped medieval European ideas about the natural order and what economic, moral and biological lessons it might teach. This book analyzes five themes found in medieval views of nature – grafting, breeding mules, original sin, property rights and disaster – to understand what some medieval people found in nature and what their assumptions and beliefs kept them from seeing.
eBook
The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine
Jacopo da Varagine (c. 1228-1298) is remembered today primarily for his immensely popular work The Golden Legend, a massive collection of stories about the saints. Compiled over the years 1260-67, The Golden Legend quickly eclipsed earlier collections of saints' lives. One indication of its popularity is the fact that so many manuscript copies of the work have survived-more than one thousand according to some estimates. Despite the enduring influence of The Golden Legend, Jacopo remains an elusive figure because he left behind so little information about himself. InThe Talents of Jacopo da Varagine, Steven A. Epstein sets out to remedy this situation through a careful study of all Jacopo's works, including many hundreds of sermons and his innovative chronicle of Genoese history.
In Epstein's sure hands, Jacopo emerges as one of the most active and talented minds of his day. Indeed, Epstein argues that one needs to read all of Jacopo's books, in a Genoese context, in order to understand the original scope of his thinking, which greatly influenced the ways generations of people across Europe experienced their Christianity. The rich sources for Jacopo's sermons, saints' lives, and history illuminate the traditions that inspired him and shaped his imaginative and artistic powers. Jacopo was also one of the inventors of social history, and his writings reveal complex and new perspectives on family life as well as the histories of gay people, slaves, Jews, and the medieval economy. Filled with impressive insights into the intellectual life of the thirteenth century,The Talents of Jacopo da Varaginewill be of interest to a wide range of medieval scholars and students of religious history, church history, and hagiography as well as intellectual history and Italian history.
eBook
Purity lost : transgressing boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000-1400
Purity Lost investigates the porous nature of social, political, and religious boundaries prevalent in the eastern Mediterranean—from the Black Sea to Egypt—during the Middle Ages. In this intriguing study, Steven A. Epstein finds that people consistently defied, overlooked, or transcended restrictions designed to preserve racial and cultural purity in order to establish relationships with those different from themselves.
These mixed relationships—among people who did not share language, creed, or skin color—undermined the pervasive claims of purity. They forced people to reflect on their own identities and the bonds—whether social, political, religious, or racial—that defined their lives. Drawing on examples from daily life and interstate politics, Epstein takes a close look at the renegades and rule-breakers of this era. He explores race, master/slave relationships, diplomatic relations between Christian Italians and Muslim Turks, religious conversions from Christian to Muslim and vice versa, and religious boundaries of the human and the angelic.
Epstein reveals the modern view of cultural, ethnic, and religious purity in the early modern Mediterranean as a mirage, and he offers new insights into how present-day conceptions about creed, color, ethnicity, and language originated.
eBook